"I think I had kind of a mid-life crisis at twenty, which probably doesn't augur real well for my longevity. So what I did, I went back home for a term, planning to play solitaire and stare out the window, whatever you do in a crisis. And all of a sudden I found myself writing fiction."It was 1986 and he was 24 years old when it was published. He began writing it fresh out of a fairly tumultuous mental health crisis at age 22 (or as he put it "a young 22") while simultaneously writing a highly t...

This book flat-out demands a multi-layered meta-review. I mean, it has everything a po-mosexual could ask for: characters aware they might be characters in a novel, nested short stories read by the characters that comment on the parent text, an intentionally unresolved and fractured plot, pages and pages of ironic philosophical dialogue, and an ending that justUnfortunately, that level of post-modern detachment requires real talent, the talent of, say, David Foster Wallace. Yet DFW famously crit...

Critical Problems on the LineCould it be that Lenore Beadsman and Leopold Bloom have more in common than just their initials (Broom/Bloom, get the clue?)? Both are engaged in a fairly closely detailed tour of their respective cities. Both are described in and through a variety of literary styles, often comedic, digressions, and innovations. Both exist in order to demonstrate points about language as much as to carry the narrative along. And the auxiliary characters to both are a pretty rum lot o...

I could very theoretically start listing the shelves where this touches upon, but I'd rather just say that this is a first novel most cocaine heads listening to the middle days of heavy metal would want to write if they were hopelessly in love with with the craziest *roughage* post-modern deconstructionists willing to push all narratives into wonderfully feathered *roughage* prose that's more absurd mixed wth frame within frame within frame *roughage* stories that are linked so very vividly with...

I am angry at myself for finishing this book. It was a total waste of time. The only reason I did finish it was because the author introduced multiple story lines that had NOTHING to do with each other, and I was intrigued to see how Wallace would tie it all together. Which he did not do. At all. "Lets see, I'll have my extremely boring main character's grandmother escape from a nursing home, then completely ignore that point while I have her and her boyfriend lay in bed and tell random short s...

It's pretty stunning how fully formed DFW's style and direction already were in his debut novel: The wordplay, the postmodern tricks, the philosophical musings, the absurd dialogues, the quirky characters, the trademark themes like entertainment, consumerism, lack of empathy, failure of communication, simply all the good DFW stuff. Our protagonist is Lenore Beadsman (24, so the same age as the author when the novel was published), a telephone switchboard operator in Cleveland trying to solve the...

SECOND READING UPDATEDecided to bump this up to 5 stars for the simple reason that I've now read it twice and generally any book I read more than once is one I call an outstanding read. More than that basic reasoning though, I really enjoy the playful language, the many puns, the clever juvenalia of the symbolism, and the gently mocking metafictional stories-within-stories. Also I've got a vested personal interest in anything pineal gland (Hail Eris!) which gland features significantly here as a...

PORTRAIT OF AN INFINITE JESTER AS A YOUNG MANYou will see it. A dream dreamt and a dream realized. With this book, my small journey is complete (in a way) and I witnessed (in a small way) what went in the making of Infinite Jest. Let me draw the conclusion in broad brushstrokes. The Broom of the System + Girl with Curious Hair is NOT equal to Infinite Jest but a jest that was beginning to take shape in a mind, which in my eyes was capable of achieving anything. What David wanted to do was crack....

Are Words the Totality of Thoughts? Fighting Wittengenstein with (attempted) BrevityThe first thing that may strike a reader of DFW’s debut is his commitment to excessive detail. I imagine that his intention, among other things, was to illustrate the idea that words circumscribe our ability to conceptualize; thus, the mental imaging that is conjured up by his descriptions are malleable due to the author’s choice of certain word inclusion and exclusion. In a humorous bit, he describes in gross de...

A very enjoyable book, which is lighter in tone than Infinite Jest but still very complex. I finished this over a week ago, while travelling up to Scotland for a walking trip on Skye, and it is no longer fresh in the memory since I have read other things since. As in Infinite Jest, Wallace has created a fictional landscape of considerable complexity - an Ohio governor who decides to create a desert (the Great Ohio Desert, so like O.N.A.N. a silly acronym) as a tourist attraction, a bird whose ab...

Lord Wallace of Amherst’s debut novel is—pardon the obvious—an enormo-homage to the postmodernist ladies. I was surprised at the sheer Gaddisness of this one (narratorless dialogue, two interlocutors per section, frequently deployed throughout) and not so surprised at the Delilloian weirdness and Barthian frametalemaking. The structure seems intricate and impressive, although the plot is mostly linear—each alphabetical sub-chapter responds to events close to those in previous alphabetical sub-ch...

This is my introduction to DFW. This book is pretty impressive for being written by a 24-year-old. The problem is this book doesn't hold together really well. It feels like it has a plot but in the end you think about it and it didn't really have one. I didn't care too much for the end of the book and I felt like even though there were a lot of really funny parts, most of the humor is very awkward. I do want to go deeper into Wallace's works.

I’ve pained and obsessed over the recognition of genius in others for a long time now and finally feel like I’ve made some progress in my own thoughts: this is the most I will ever have to say about a book I read only a third of before giving up. This, this, a story told to me with all the confidence of a young man so filled with self-belief and enthusiasm for a tale that he might well explain the entire plot of a film he enjoyed to me after I had just answered ‘Yes, I did see it.’ [1]To those o...

A fine first novel by the late, great David Foster Wallace. It got dull and confusing at parts but on the whole it was an enjoyable read. 3 out of 5

David Foster Wallace was once quoted as saying "The Broom Of The System seems like it was written by a very smart 14 year old". I respectfully disagree with the always self-degrading and self-conscious author (Rest In Peace). In fact, due the relative success of this novel, and his inability to utilize it properly, Wallace had a mental breakdown. The circumstances around this book, both before and after, are incredibly interesting, and regretfully, there is a whole lot of space here to talk abou...

Part 1Judith Prietht. Once I sounded it out I hated her so much. DFW’s humor is something I haven't found anywhere else: its weirdness, the build up to the jokes, and the LOLZ. The therapist scenes were the hardest I’ve laughed at a book since the Eschaton debacle. Another thing DFW brings to the table is his descriptive writing which immediately embeds me into the scene,The hair hangs in bangs, and the sides curve down past Lenore’s cheeks and nearly meet in points below her chin, like the brit...

A borderline maximalist novel. Clever. Witty at parts. Rife with Wittgenstein theories. Overall, thoroughly enjoyable.

This book is a complete treasure for fans of David Foster Wallace. Here, in the honors thesis he wrote as an undergraduate student, we bear witness to the beginning stages of the thematic content (entertainment; consumerism; meaning; raw, gooey sentimentality) and literary style (philosophical, clever, post-modern) that would ultimately evolve into his masterpiece, Infinite Jest.Inspired by Wittgenstein, The Broom of the System is — in the simplest terms — about language, meaning and identity. T...